Visual Literacy and the use of the Internet in the Classroom

Visual literacy allows for students to make meaningful connections through a given image.  Students then take these connections to process and communicate their own ideas that capture their visual thinking.  Students need to be able to make these meaningful connections in order for there to be purpose behind why they are learning.  The internet can help students become visual learners by providing them with loads of images in which they can interpret themselves.  Doing this creates higher level thinking skills and teaches students how to interpret feelings, emotions, etc.  We want students to be independent thinkers and visual literacy helps with that.

I can honestly say that I have never thought about using visual-thinking strategies in my math class.  Math isn't a subject in which a picture maps out the concept and how to perform operations, especially in upper grades.  The only way I could think of using visual-thinking strategies is with word problems.  Students can look at a picture and interpret what the picture means and then match that picture with a given word problem to solve.  Word problems in the only time during math class that we use pictures.  My classes will be getting into transformations soon and I feel that students can study a picture to determine the transformation that was done in order to get from one image to the next.  

The internet is a huge tool used in my classroom.  I want the internet to be a helpful resources and not a time filler.  The internet needs to have meaning to the content so that students can make connections and be more engaged in the learning.  I use the internet a lot to locate videos to show my students on given math concepts, have them play interactive games or simulations to model a strategy and to even assign classwork.  The websites I use will always provide videos and hints for students to access when they are confused or stuck on a problem.